when I
read it. I wondered, Could the chancellor of a great University
possibly be ignorant of the facts? Would he state that which he knew
was not true? I could not explain it either way. I was compelled to
think, if he was thoughtless and careless about it, that he had no
business to be about a matter of such importance. But he said the
Apostles' Creed was written eighteen hundred years ago.

Now what are the facts? The apostles had nothing whatever to do with
the creed, as everybody knows to-day who chooses to look into the
matter. It grew, and was four or five hundred years in growth, one
phrase in one shape held in a certain part of the Church, another
phrase in another shape held in another part of the Church, people
holding nothing so sacred about it but that they were at perfect
liberty to change it and add to it and take away from it, until, as we
get it to- day, it appeared for the first time in history at about the
year 500. And yet it stands in the Church to-day claiming to be the
Apostles' Creed.

And this Apostles' Creed, if it were a part of the purpose I have in
mind this morning, I could analyze, and find that it contains elements
which nobody accepts to-day; and yet nobody dares to propose touching
it, such is the reverence for that which is old. So much more reverence
does the world have for that which is old than for that which is true.

If you approach a Churchman in regard to his belief in the resurrection
of the body, he will say, Of course, we do not believe in the
resurrection of the body: we believe in the resurrection of the soul.
But he does not believe in the resurrection of the soul, either.

Let me make two statements in regard to this. In the first place, if he
does not believe in the resurrection of the body, he has no right to
say it, because the House of Bishops, representing the whole Church of
the United states, in an authoritative pastoral letter issued within
three years, declares that fixity of interpretation is of the essence
of the creeds. No man, then, is at liberty to change the interpretation
to suit himself.

And then, again, nobody, as I say, believes in the resurrection of the
soul. Why? Because that statement, with the authority of the House of
Bishops that nobody has any business to change or reinterpret, carries
with it a world underneath the surface of the earth to which the dead
go down; and resurrection means coming up again from that underground
world. Nobody